Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
117,041
edits
m (categories and general cleanup) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (standardize headers, pothole texts, italics on work names) |
||
(8 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 4:
As the [[Cyberpunk]] movement took tropes from the gritty American detective/crime novels of the 1930s, so did films and TV shows take inspiration from the [[Film Noir]] of the same period (or based on it). Featuring darkness except for critically placed light, and often a single source of it for the entire scene, the look is dramatic. Unfortunately, in a serious case of [[Fridge Logic]], it's pretty dumb when you think about it. Large open offices maintained in darkness except for the single desk lamps of the workers. Entrance ways and throne rooms in complete darkness but for the single row of spotlights down the middle. Looks cool, but you never see one of those deskbound workers getting up and running into the wastebasket because their vision is screwed up going from their light source into the surrounding darkness.
On alien ships, this is seen frequently to show how "alien" they are. Because aliens don't, you know, need to see anything. Or they see in a spectrum of light invisible to humans. Or they evolved from something nocturnal, making human-level illumination painfully bright to them. (Or they're [[The
There is a certain ''practical'' aspect to this: nothing hides cheaply-made sets and props better than poor lighting.
Line 13:
Compare [[City Noir]], [[Unnaturally Blue Lighting]] and [[Used Future]]. Contrast [[Everything Is an iPod In The Future]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Ghost in
* ''[[
== [[
* ''[[
== [[Film]] ==
* The ''[[Alien (
** In ''Alien'', note that the crew areas (easily identified by being mostly white) are brightly lit, and it's the cargo / maintenance / engineering areas that are poorly lit. As for ''Aliens'', the colony on LV-426 had been shot to hell, everyone was dead, and much of the place had been blown up with 'seismic survey charges'.
** ''Alien 3'': the entire setting. The surface of the penal planet was cold and dark, even when the sun shone, and the prison itself had black shadows everywhere. The look of the film has more in common with old German black-and-white films than with the preceding ''Alien'' franchise.
* ''[[Immortal (
** [[Enki Bilal]] seems to love this. His two other movies (Bunker Palace Hotel and Tykho Moon) have a similar Noir-ish feel.
*** Bilal is better known as a graphic novel artist, at least in Europe, and his favourite colouring tool appears to be charcoal.
Line 35:
** And by extension, ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' and ''[[Silent Moebius]],'' two anime series that took visual inspiration from ''Blade Runner.''
* ''[[The Terminator]]'', which even had a night club called "Tech Noir".
* Terry Gilliam's dystopian [[Sci Fi]] movie ''[[Brazil (
* ''Highlander II.'
* ''Renaissance'', a French CGI film about a [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] cop's search for a woman and her {{spoiler|immortality-granting}} [[MacGuffin]].
* The setting of ''[[
* ''[[Gattaca]]'' isn't set very far in the future, nor are there any aliens to be seen, but the aesthetic is purest SF noir.
* The aptly named [[Dark City]].
* Inverted by ''[[
* ''[[Star Wars]]'' has some settings like this, such as the Emperor's throne room and the interior of the ''Millennium Falcon''. By contrast, Imperial Star Destroyers are much more brightly lit.
Line 48:
* ''[[Altered Carbon]]''. Pretty much all of it.
* The aptly titled novel ''[[Cyberpunk|NOIR]]'' by K.W. Jeter, where a [[Irony|sympathetic]] guy named McNihil is a retired [[Private Detective|PI]] and had his eyes surgically altered to see the world in shades of grey, like noir films of the 30s.
* ''[[The Windup Girl]]'' combines this trope with Biopunk to wonderful effect. Although it is often sunny in 23rd century Thailand, there is little electricity, so every building is dimly lit and grungy.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Star Trek
** Even ''TNG'' eventually went noir when the movies started rolling out. Sometime between ''All Good Things...'' and ''[[Star Trek Generations|Generations]]'', someone apparently busted out half the lights on the Enterprise-D.
*** The real-life explanation is that the E-D sets were not built to a high enough standard to look real on film using normal light. ''Generations'' used dim lighting to hide flaws in the sets. This does not explain light levels on the Enterprise-E, however.
**** The ''Enterprise-E'' is a Sovereign class warship, of course. And you can't know that your ship is a warship and not a neighborhood with a warp drive unless everything's dim, right?
**** The ships controls are rather bright touch-screen panels, dimmer lights would likely help them stand out a little better.
** ''TNG'' had actually ''started'' with noir lighting. The production staff apparently hated this look, but for some strange reason waited until the third season before firing the initial lighting cameraman and bringing in someone who brightened things up.
** "Yesterday's Enterprise" featured an alternate timeline where the Federation was at war with the Klingons, [http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Enterprise-d_bridge_alternate.jpg the bridge] was very dimly lit, and [[Take That|there was a plausible reason to have]] [[Improbable Age|Wesley as a full ensign]]. Interestingly, the [[Darker and Edgier]] alternate timeline had an opposite effect on [[Good Guy Bar|Ten Forward]]: instead of being the usual mood-lit recreational area, it's a banal mess hall with white fluorescent lighting (now, in the normal timeline, the lights ''do'' go up in there as needed, but you'd probably only notice if you're paying much attention to it).
** As noted on ''[[SF Debris]]'', ''[[Star Trek: Voyager
*** Whoever designed ''Voyager'' had a flair for the dramatic, as the lights on the Bridge would dim whenever the ship went on [[Red Alert]].
** Klingon and Romulan ships in ''[[Star Trek:
* An episode of ''[[
* For some reason interiors of [[Stargate Universe
** Justified in-universe because Destiny is always running on the stray edge of being out of power, is falling apart at the joints and hasn't had living-people maintenance of any kind in a million years. The fact that it has working lights at all is a minor miracle and considering that in many cases they were lacking power and parts for life support and basic functions, it's easy to justify leaving the lights down low and not repairing them all.
* In ''[[Firefly]]'', the interior of ''Serenity'' is always depicted as fairly dark to contrast with the bright florescent lighting and [[Creepy Cleanliness]] of Alliance ships (see ''[[Star Wars]]'').
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Warhammer
== [[Video Games]] ==
* A lot of the environments in the ''[[Riddick]]'' games (and Dark Fury) have very high-contrast lighting, with lots of shadows. The lead character can see in the dark. The first game (Butcher Bay) takes place in the universe's toughest prison, and Dark Fury and Dark Athena on spaceships run by bounty-hunting mercenaries. You'd think it'd be in their best interest to keep the lights on.
* The Brotherhood of Nod from ''[[Command
** According to ''[[
** The GDI global stratospheric transports in ''Tiberium Twilight'', while not as dark as Nod's facilities earlier, are still not well lit.
* ''Doom 3'' was infamous for not giving you enough light. On Mars. Apparently, we not only forgot duct tape, but basic lighting.
Line 78:
** On a battleship this is potentially justified in that it makes instruments easier to see. The living sections of the ship do seem to be a lot brighter than the deck level...
** It also explains why Cerberus is so much more advanced than the Alliance: their stations and vessels actually have adequate lighting!
*** Ironically, this was meant to make them seem creepier, in a cold, sterile, medical sense.
* ''[[Deus Ex
* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' (fittingly, considering the title) has several dimly lit levels, including the Skedar attack ship.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Just for Pun]]▼
[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]
[[Category:We Will Not Use an Index In The Future]]▼
[[Category:Spectacle]]▼
[[Category:German Expressionism]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Lighting Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Spectacle]]
▲[[Category:We Will Not Use an Index In The Future]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Future Is Noir, The}}
|